I’ve long been thinking of how to make a “digital translation” of Medea. For awhile, I planned to do so by using the Dragon Age toolset and create a visual encounter that played through the story of Euripides’ Medea. This proved doable but cumbersome, and I’ve decided instead to make a purely text-based translation in Inform 7. (The design of the translation is greatly influenced by Emily Short’s work and relies heavily on Eric Eve’s Conversation Framework extension.) I’m going to use this space to talk about the questions that are raised about the text, about narrative, about characters, etc., while I work on and eventually complete this project.

I’m still in the early stages of planning out exactly what the conversations trees look like, but already I’ve encountered a few interesting questions about the text itself. First, though, some ground rules. More

Truth and fiction have had quite the volatile relationship. Most people can agree that fiction is neither true nor false, but rather somewhere in between those two. Fiction is true in the world it creates (unless, of course, the narrator or characters lie to you, but such a statement is only meaningful if the literary world has its own truth values).

In a traditional linear narrative, it is typically not too difficult to decide what the truth statements of the world would be. For example, in the Disney rendition of Cinderella:

The Stepmother is mean.

The stepsisters are mean.

Cinderella is good.

Cinderella is beautiful.

The prince is not bad.

The coach is an altered pumpkin.

The list could go on and on. But what about a story that has multiple endings or multiple possible narrative experiences? I’ve been looking at Alabaster, a multi-authored piece by Emily Short and others. [Spoilers will follow, so go play it quick!]. More